Judge to face lawsuit for ordering Muslim woman to remove head scarf

Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Southfield -- An Islamic group says it will file a federal lawsuit Wednesday against a Wayne County judge who ordered a Muslim woman to remove her head scarf.
"No hats allowed in the courtroom," Wayne Circuit Judge J. William Callahan is heard telling Raneen Albaghdady in a partial video of the June incident posted on YouTube.
The incident, during a hearing on the woman's application to change her name, follows a 2006 controversy when a Hamtramck judge ordered Ginnah Muhammad to remove her facial veil, called a niqab, in court.

Unlike an Islamic veil, a head scarf, called a hijab, mostly covers the hair, not the eyes or face, which some judges say they need to see to assess credibility.
"This is a lady whose face was fully visible," Canton Township attorney Nabih Ayad said today of Albaghdady. "There was no reason to tell her to remove her scarf."
Callahan could not be reached. But his assistant, Susan Salas, said Callahan is sensitive to religious preferences and "would never ask someone to remove her hijab." Immediately after the portion of the hearing shown on the YouTube video ended, the woman said, "It doesn't matter," and removed the scarf without ever saying it was a hijab or had any religious significance, Salas said.
The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations will join the woman as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, in which Callahan and the county will be named as defendants, Ayad said. The lawsuit is to be detailed at a 2 p.m. news conference today at the council's office in Southfield.
Melanie Elturk, a staff attorney at the council, said Callahan's actions violate the constitutional right to freedom of religion and a statement President Barack Obama made in a June address about the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab.
"This judge targeted a Muslim woman's religious attire, but he could just as easily have demanded the removal of a Sikh turban, a Jewish yarmulke or a Catholic nun's habit," she said.

Muslim men join together to prevent violence against women

Violence against women is epidemic. According to a CDC Fact Sheet on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), each year in the United States about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes are committed against women. Women account for 75% of the IPV-related deaths.
Violence against men is also a major problem. Each year, men experience about 2.9 million intimate partner-related physical assaults.
The CDC defines IPV as:
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is abuse that occurs between two people in a close relationship. The term “intimate partner” includes current and former spouses and dating partners. IPV exists along a continuum from a single episode of violence to ongoing battering.
IVP is not just physical abuse. It also includes sexual abuse, threats, and emotional abuse. These 4 types of behavior are not exclusive and several types of IVP may occur simultaneously. IVP often starts with emotional abuse and then progresses to sexual or physical abuse.
The health effects of IVP are far reaching and, in general, the longer the abuse continues the more serious the consequences. Physical injuries are common, including minor injuries such as cuts and bruises to more serious injuries such as broken bones, internal bleeding, head trauma, and death. Emotional trauma can result in low-self esteem, difficulty in trusting others and forming healthy relationships, eating disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts, and more.
Violence against women does not discriminate. Women suffer throughout the world, regardless of country of origin, economic status, educational level, religion, etc.
Concerned brothers have joined together to address this issue in the Muslim community. One such group is the Muslim Men Against Domestic Abuse (MMADA), established in February 2009 and “dedicated to domestic tranquility.”
Members must pledge to “never to engage in, support, or remain silent about the physical, psychological, and emotional abuse of Muslim and non-Muslim women and children.”
MMADA’s goal is to educate and advocate:
We aim to provide educational resources and serve as a tool for advocacy. Recognizing that domestic abuse is merely a symptom of much larger social, institutional, and individual pathologies, we seek to identify and eradicate its root causes. We do so with the belief that our religion calls us to stand for justice and reject all forms of oppression.
MMADA’s websites provides links to other organizations also dealing with this issue, including the Peaceful Families Project, which describes itself as,
an American Muslim organization that joins other faith communities in recognizing that domestic violence is a form of oppression that affects people of all faiths. We believe that Islam should never be used to justify abusive behavior; instead Islam should be used as a resource to prevent domestic violence.
The website also links to Karamah, Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, “a Human Rights Organization of Muslim Women Lawyers Dedicated to Promoting Dignity for All Human Beings Through Education and Legal Outreach.”
Another group of men who have joined together to address this issue is Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence, “an educational initiative of the Baitul Salaam Network, Inc." Its blog has links to many resources as well. It also has a pledge, which was signed by men from all over the world at the 46th Annual ISNA Convention this July.
Islam categorically condemns violence against women. The Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace--whom Muslims are told to emulate--had immense respect for women. He treated his wives with great kindness and never hit them. The Prophet (saas) stated,
"The best of you is he who is best to his family, and I am the best among you to my family." (Tirmidhi)
A YouTube video well worth watching is Sermon: Removing the Silence on Domestic Violence by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf (see link below). At one point Shaykh Hamza states,
Anybody that tells you violence against your own spouse is justifiable in Islam is not only a liar but he’s absolutely disparaging the Messenger of Allaah (saas), who was sent as a mercy to all the world and certainly a mercy to women.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEKJDgXO-U&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eexaminer%2Ecom%2Fx%2D9968%2DBaltimore%2DMuslim%2DExaminer%7Ey2009m7d21%2DMuslim%2Dmen%2Djoin%2Dtogether%2Dto%2Dprevent%2Dviolence%2Dagainst%2Dwomen&feature=player_embedded

J. Samia Mair
Go to J. Samia's Home Page
Baltimore Muslim Examiner

Cars burned by rioters On Tuesday

Officials arranged a tour for journalists of sites that were attacked by Uighur rioters on Sunday. But the public relations event backfired spectacularly during the tour's first stop — a car dealership in southern Urumqi where several autos were burned by rioters.
After interviewing people at the business, the journalists crossed the road to a Uighur market, where angry women in traditional, brightly colored headscarves began to gather.
One woman who gave her name as Aynir said police arrived Monday evening and arrested about 300 men. The authorities were looking for men with fresh wounds or other signs they joined the rioting.
"My husband was detained at gunpoint. They were hitting people. They were stripping people naked. My husband was scared so he locked the door, but the police broke down the door and took him away," Aynir said. "He had nothing to do with the riots."
The crowd of women swelled to about 200 and they began marching in the street, chanting, "Freedom!" and "Release our children!" They were quickly sandwiched by hundreds of police on both ends of the road, along with trucks with water cannons. Some women screamed at the security forces and jostled the men, who were armed with assault rifles, tear gas guns, shields and sticks. The crowd dispersed after a standoff that lasted 90 minutes.

Deaths trigger riots

Uighurs have said this week's rioting was triggered by the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. State-run media have said two workers died, but many Uighurs believe more were killed and said the incident was an example of how little the government cared about them.

In the days that followed, graphic photos spread on the Internet purportedly showing at least a half-dozen bodies of Uighurs, with Han Chinese standing over them, arms raised in victory. Expunged from some sites, the photos were posted and reposted, some on overseas servers beyond the reach of censors.
In a sign the government was trying to address communal grievances, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday that 13 people had been arrested in the factory fight, including three from Xinjiang. Two others were arrested for spreading rumors on the Internet that Xinjiang employees had raped two female workers, the report said, citing a local police official.

Internet plays key role in China's latest unrestWorld Blog in 2008: China's Muslim dilemma

Chinese officials have largely dismissed claims that the Urumqi rioting was caused by long-simmering resentments among the Uighurs. They said the crowds were stirred up by U.S.-exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer and her overseas followers, who used the Internet to spread rumors.
"Using violence, making rumors, and distorting facts are what cowards do because they are afraid to see social stability and ethnic solidarity in Xinjiang," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing during a blistering verbal attack on Kadeer, who has denied the allegations.
Li Zhi, Urumqi's highest-ranking Communist Party official, also railed against Kadeer as he addressed the angry Han mobs. Standing on an armored police vehicle, Li pumped his fist as he shouted through a megaphone, "Strike down Rebiya!"

Mobs spread ethnic strife in western China

Curfew imposed after violence claims 156 lives
URUMQI, China - Sobbing Muslim women scuffled with riot police, and Chinese men wielding steel pipes and meat cleavers rampaged through the streets as ethnic tensions worsened in China's oil-rich Xinjiang territory, prompting President Hu Jintao to cut short a G8 summit trip Wednesday.
The new violence in Xinjiang's capital erupted Tuesday only a few hours after the city's top officials told reporters the streets in Urumqi were returning to normal following a riot that killed 156 people Sunday. The officials said more than 1,000 suspects had been rounded up since the spasm of attacks by Muslim Uighurs against Han Chinese, the ethnic majority.
In a rare move, Hu cut short a trip to Italy to take part in a Group of Eight meeting later Wednesday to travel home to deal with the outbreak of violence, the Foreign Ministry said on its Web site.

The chaos returned when hundreds of young Han men seeking revenge began gathering on sidewalks with kitchen knives, clubs, shovels and wooden poles. They spent most of the afternoon marching through the streets, smashing windows of Muslim restaurants and trying to push past police cordons protecting minority neighborhoods. Riot police successfully fought them back with volleys of tear gas and a massive show of force.
At one point, the mob chased a boy who looked like he was a Uighur. The youth, who appeared to be about 12, climbed a tree, and the crowd tried to whack his legs with their sticks as the terrified boy cried. He was eventually allowed to leave unharmed as the rioters ran off to focus on another target.
Curfew imposedAfter the crowds thinned out, a curfew was announced from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. Police cars cruised the streets in the evening, telling people to go home, and they complied.
The ugly scenes earlier in the day highlighted how far away the Communist Party was from one of its top goals: creating a "harmonious society." The unrest was also an embarrassment for the Chinese leadership, which is getting ready to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist rule and wants to show it has created a stable country.
Harmony has been hard to achieve in Xinjiang, a rugged region three times the size of Texas with deserts, mountains and the promise of huge oil and natural gas reserves. Xinjiang is also the homeland for 9 million Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers), a Turkic-speaking group.
Many Uighurs believe the Han Chinese, who have been flooding into the region in recent years, are trying to crowd them out. They often accuse the Han of prejudice and waging campaigns to restrict their religion and culture.
The Han Chinese allege the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for all the economic development and modernization the Han have brought to Xinjiang. They also complain that the Uighurs' religion — a moderate form of Sunni Islam — keeps them from blending into Chinese society, which is officially communist and largely secular.
"We have been good to them. We take good care of them," said Liu Qiang, a middle-aged Han Chinese businessman who joined the marchers. "But the Uighurs are stupid. They think we have more money than they do because we're unfair to them."
'A major tragedy'U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called the violence a "major tragedy."

"I urge Uighur and Han civic leaders, and the Chinese authorities at all levels, to exercise great restraint so as not to spark further violence and loss of life," she said.
In other violence Tuesday, witnesses said groups of about 10 Uighur men with bricks and knives attacked Han Chinese passers-by and shop-owners outside the city's southern railway station, until police ran them off, witnesses said.
"Whenever the rioters saw someone on the street, they would ask 'Are you a Uighur?' If they kept silent or couldn't answer in the Uighur language, they would get beaten or killed," said a restaurant worker near the station, who only gave his surname, Ma.
It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed in those reported attacks.
The authorities have been trying to control the unrest by blocking the Internet and limiting access to texting services on cell phones. At the same time, police have generally been allowing foreign media to cover the tensions.

FBI probes Muslim leader's death in SoCal desert

YERMO, Calif.—The FBI is investigating the death of an imam whose body was found inside a burned home in the Mojave Desert that was spraypainted with racial slurs and swastikas.
Agency spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says agents are working with local authorities to determine whether a crime had been committed and, if so, whether it was a hate crime.
Ali Mohammed was painting over the graffiti at his home in the town of Yermo when the fire erupted on June 27. Authorities said the fire was suspicious, but have not determined how it started.
The 51-year-old Mohammed founded three mosques in the area.
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Information from: The Sun, http://www.sbsun.com